


Don't Want a Martyr

by iwantcandy2



Series: Have you heard the good news? [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adult Trolls, Ancestors, Gen, Pre-Sburb/Sgrub, Troll Culture, troll religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 16:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwantcandy2/pseuds/iwantcandy2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Karkat is faced with a magnificent destiny, and promptly tells it to go screw itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Want a Martyr

**Author's Note:**

> This is a result of my musing about if Karkat knew about the Sufferer, and how he survived hiding his blood so long.

On Alternia, fully mature trolls are a rarer sight than that limited-edition golden Horsaroni Tavros won’t shut the hell up about. They simply aren’t there. They are too busy fighting and murdering and bleeding to death under alien suns on planets light years distant. So when Karkat heard the rumors swirling around his neighborhood of an adult troll lurking in the woods, he wrote it off as some sort of pathetic ghost story to scare the pre-pupated recuperacoon-soilers. An adult would have better things to do than play happy camper next to his house.

Those fucktards probably saw an ugly barkbeast, and now they’re convinced our neighborhood is being invaded by rebel dissenters.

As stupid as the story was, Karkat still spent the early hours of the morning staring out his window, watching the painfully bright predawn light and thinking about what it would be like to be an adult stuck on this planet. Terrible, obviously. Any adult on this planet would be a deserter from the army, constantly on the run from the drones. They’d spend their waking moments glancing over their shoulder and their days in a nightmarish, soporless haze. 

But maybe that was better than being culled. 

Karkat was getting older, growing ever closer to the magical threshold of responsibility and pain known as adulthood. And as horrifying as that was for normal trolls, it was ten times worse for him. He had been lucky so far, staying shut up in his house and keeping his mutation a secret. However, there was no possible way he could pass the occupancy exams without the designated blood tests. Just a little blood in a vial to verify his identity. And then that little blood would turn into a hell of a mess, his entrails spread across the examination room as the security drones tore him open. Yup. Growing up would suck.

Karkat had always assumed he would die when he came of age. He played at being a Threshecutioner more to occupy his time (and to wield some badass sickles) than any actual hope of every being allowed to draw breath in the presence of an adult troll. 

But maybe he didn’t have to die a sudden, public death. Maybe he could hide in the woods and die a drawn-out, isolated one. He had always assumed that resistance was futile, that any attempt to escape the culling drones would be a waste of his already short life. But if an actual adult troll was out there, then that meant it was possible.

Except that there was no adult troll living in the woods. It was just a lie a bunch of wrigglers told each other so they could feel the warm, fuzzy sensation of pissing their pants. So Karkat didn’t waste much time thinking about glorious freedom that would never be his. Instead, he spent his days as normal: whining, bitching, moaning, complaining, and trolling. Trolling was his favorite. 

Karkat tried to interact with his neighbors as little as physically possible, but he still had to occasionally emerge from the cesspool of misery and cheap takeout that was his respiteblock. Mostly to do things like take out the trash or find a replacement for something his lusus had broken. It was on one of these trips (to both throw away an object broken by crabdad and replace it. Two for one!) that he was accosted by a group of three-sweep old pants-wetters. Well, not so much “accosted” as peered at curiously from the other side of a refuse canister, accompanied by nervous giggles.

Karkat hated people staring at him. He hated people talking about him. And he certainly hated piquing people’s curiosity. Curiosity culled the meowbeast, and curiosity could get him culled too if people didn’t learn to fucking MIND THEIR OWN BUSINESS.

He snarled at the bundle of wrigglers, baring his nubby row of fangs and lowering his head. They ran away shrieking, but there was laughter in their voices, too. Okay. Laughter was obnoxious, but as long as they found him funny chances were they were laughing over his small horns and ridiculous attire (it’s not like he enjoyed wearing a poofy turtleneck in harvesting-season heat). Fine, fine, as long as no one ran and got the culling drones. He could be an object of mockery and mirth, so long as his horrible blood stayed in his horrible body. 

Hiking the neck of his sweater higher, Karkat considered turning around and retreating to the safety of his hive. However, the food-mincing apparatus wasn’t going to get itself, and crabdad was an absolute bitch if his slurry wasn’t chopped finely enough. 

With a sigh and a mumbled profanity cursing his lusus, Karkat headed towards The Store. Since so much shopping was done online, with regular rations of food and essentials delivered by drones, there was very little actual shopping on Alternia. The region he lived in had only one store, and it was less a market and more of a warehouse, with metal shelves twenty feet tall and everything a monochrome grey. The store is managed by worker drones. Not adults. Worker drones. 

Karkat told a hovering automaton what he wanted, and it whirred away to retrieve it from the maze of steel shelving. While he waited, tapping his foot impatiently, his gaze landed on the bulletin board covering an enormous section of the wall. Normally it was plastered with flyers for stupid dumb social gatherings that stupid dumb normal trolls went to, like FLARP sessions or troll anime clubs or whatever else the cool kids were into these days. Karkat had long since sworn off any IRL interaction (not since a Fiduspawn game gone horribly wrong). What caught his eye was a giant banner with bold red text (fucking red).

NOTICE: ALL TROLLS ARE TO REPORT SUSPICIOUS OR UNPATRIOTIC ACTIVITY IMMEDIATELY. IT IS TREASON TO AIDE AN INSURRECTIONIST.

STAY OUT OF THE WOODS.

Well that wasn’t suspicious as fuck. Nope, no red flags there.

The worker drone returned with his package, beeping for payment. Karkat emptied his wallet (fucking crabdad burning through his fucking living allotment) and exited the store. His mind traveled faster than his feet, thinking about the banner. It was one thing for a bunch of over-excited kids to make up rumors, but if the authorities were buying into it, then…

Then it might be reality. However, this only proved his earlier despair about how a deserter couldn’t escape culling for long. If they knew he was here, then it was only a matter of time before he was cold in the ground. 

Maybe I can help him. Take him in or something.

Karkat had to take a moment to facepalm over that ridiculous feat of stupidity. What was he thinking? He was trying to stay under the radar, survive for a few more sweeps. If he stuck his neck out for every random asshole, then it was only a matter of time before the ax came down.

But even as he made these arguments, Karkat knew he would end up going into the forest anyways. It was probably another symptom of his terrible mutation: he couldn’t stand by and watch people suffer. It was incredibly fucking inconvenient. 

After returning home, he spent the rest of the night mulling over what he could do. He tried to talk himself out of it, reasoning that the poor fucker deserved it. Fucking betraying the empire and running away like a widdle baby hopbeast. But then another part of him whispered that he should help, that as long as he had the ability he had the responsibility. Distantly, Karkat wondered if other trolls suffered from moral schizophrenia, or if that was just another side effect of his awful genetics. 

He waited until the first streaks of sun shone over the horizon. Gathering up his Sunshield(trademark) jacket and day vision goggles, he stuffed a few cans of food into a sack. 

Now came the difficult part. He was technically going to be breaking curfew, a rule that was enforced more by the sun than by any actual force. But if anyone saw him leaving, it would put undue attention on him. 

He felt like Troll Tom Cruise in the movie “In which he is an undercover spy who was falsely accused of treason and he accidentally drags a hapless girl into a session of intergalactic espionage and intrigue and the two struggle to survive and elude the authorities while trying to clear his name and uncover the real masterminds working against the glorious empire and along the way they accidentally fall into a matespritship.” Yeah. That’s exactly what he felt like. Sans the espionage and redrom. 

He darted through the diminishing shadows. Karkat knew the position of every surveillance monitor on the block. Years of paranoia and the all-consuming fear of being found out paid off occasionally. So unless some twerp with insomnia was risking blindness by peeping out their window, he was in the clear. 

He made his way down the drab, empty streets, to the edge of the dwelling zone. Past here was wild forest, filled with danger and unknown. Not that the forests were forbidden. Young trolls were encouraged to go hunting and foraging, even if they didn’t need supplies. Help weed out the weak and all that. It’s just that he had never seen it in the daylight. Even with the absolutely ridiculous goggles plastered around his eyes, everything looked pale and washed out, like the colors had been bleached. The shadows were all wrong, too. Sharp contrast instead of the soft edges he was used to. It was like the world had been rendered by an artistically-challenged wriggler. 

Even through his Sunshield (trademark), Karkat could feel the heat of the sun. It was like being pinned under a magnifying glass, and he hated it. 

“Well,” he said out loud, fully aware of how stupid it was to talk to himself but too nervous to shut up, “Now what the fuck am I supposed to do? I guess I can aimlessly traverse the planet until I myself am a fully grown adult. And then I can lean over to take a drink from a lake and see my reflection in the moonlight and realize it was me I was searching for all along, or some self-discovery shit like that. Sounds like the twist to a troll M Night Shyamalan movie.” (troll M night Shyamalan had been culled sweeps ago for treason against the empire for making a notably shitty adaptation of one of the Condesce’s most beloved cartoons.)

He continued to rattle on to himself, feeling more ridiculous by the minute. His information about this supposed deserter was no more substantial than a fart, and the sun was really starting to boil his think pan.

Foot catching on a root, Karkat faceplanted onto the forest floor, briefly managing to reach first base with the ground. He sprang up in a roar, a stream of angry gibberish flying out of his mouth. He felt the syrupy stickiness of his blood on his tongue, which sent him into even greater heights of rage. Several startled flapbeasts took flight upon hearing his outpouring of righteous fury against the FUCKING ground for being in his FUCKING WAY and he was going to come back here with a blowtorch and then we’ll see who is laughing. 

He was working himself into a nice frenzy, really letting himself loose out here where no one could give him a wide berth or cast strange glances, when he heard a cough behind him. Karkat almost jumped out of his carapace. He whirled, hissing and spitting, only to be confronted by an enormous, dark, intimidating figure. 

Karkat had never seen an adult troll in real life before. However, the instinctual rush of fear, not to mention the yellow horns protruding from beneath a hood, helped him identify the figure for what it was. For a second, the two trolls stared each other down, each one tense and ready to bolt.

Finally, Karkat broke the tension with an awkward, “Um I, uh, was looking for you. Brought you food and stuff.”

He held up the sack he had dragged along. In response, the adult raised one hand and pointed at Karkat’s face. His fingers trembled slightly. He was wearing a full-face sun visor, but Karkat could read from his body language that something was upsetting him. 

“What, is my face seriously that ugly?” Karkat sneered. The curling of his lips brought another sting, and he remembered the fall. And the blood. His hand snapped up to his mouth, wiping away the mixture of spittle and hemoglobin. Sure enough, his hand came away red.

Okay, don’t panic.

He was panicking. 

Okay, panic a little. Just play it cool and don’t say anything incriminating.

“STOP FUCKING LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT! HAVEN’T YOU EVER SEEN A MUTANT BEFORE?”

That’s it, I quit. You’re on your own, asshole.

Thus abandoned by his inner voice of reason, Karkat turned to abscond. The adult snatched his hand, a grip so strong it might as well have been a shackle. (Would he be that strong when he matured? Oh wait, he was going to be culled before then.) Karkat latched onto the hand with his fangs, but it was like gnawing on concrete. So he tried flailing around, but that was useless. Also hilarious to watch. The guy could squirm like a meowbeast on fire.

“You must come with me,” the adult said, its voice deep and reverberating behind the mask. It suddenly dragged him off in a different direction. If Karkat had any choice, the answer would have been FUCK NO, but he didn’t, so he just stumbled along behind the figure.

The adult dragged him to a cave. From the outside, it looked shallow, just a pile of rocks with an opening. However, the natural cave walls almost immediately gave way to a machine-dug tunnel that extended deep down, far enough that they were safe from the sun’s harsh glare. The adult released its stranglehold on Karkat, who stumbled forward a few feet.

With predatory grace, the adult cast off its hood and mask, revealing a face that was ebony and eyes a deep shade of teal. Just as surprisingly, the smooth curve of the face and graceful lift of the mouth marked it as female.

“Don’t worry, we are safe in here,” she said. Without the mask, her voice didn’t have that metallic rumble, but it was still deep and menacing. 

Karkat did not feel safe. He was alone with a being twice his size, in the middle of the forest during the dead of day. 

“Look, I just wanted to give you this,” Karkat said, holding up the sack. Maybe a peace offering would help him get out of here with a few of his favorite limbs intact.

“How kind of you,” the adult said, its voice betraying no hint of gratitude. “Take off your jacket.”

Normally, Karkat would have bickered with anyone giving him a direct order, but he was feeling a little more compliant today. What with being completely helpless and all. He shrugged off the thick Sunshield (it’s still trademarked) and let it fall to the floor. After the suffocating heat of the jacket, the cave air was chilly, and he wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.

The adult was staring at him strangely. Specifically, at the symbol on his chest. It was seriously weirding Karkat out. He wanted to tell the adult to fuck off. Instead, he settled for slowly edging towards the entrance.

“Sit. I have something for you,” the adult ordered. 

Confused, Karkat sat on the mildly damp stone floor, feeling wet seep into his pants.

And now it looks like I’ve pissed myself. Brilliant.

The adult went to a raggedy box leaning against one wall, rummaging through it for a minute. There was the clank of metallic objects hitting against each other. Definitely more expensive-sounding than what he expected a hobo to have.

“Finding you was easier than I thought it would be,” the adult called out, still hunched over.

“Really? Because I spent most of the fucking day searching for you.”

She laughed, turning around and walking towards him. In her hands was a strange device Karkat couldn’t begin to make sense of. It had a pointy, syringe-like end attached to a large glass chamber, with some metal cylinders poking out of it.

“Hold out your hand.”

“Mmm, yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Karkat said, pressing his hands to his chest. If he thought he could outrun her long legs, he would have bolted towards the entrance. 

“I won’t hurt you,” the adult reassured. It wasn’t convincing.

“Look, I just came out here to give you some shitty grubnola bars and see if I could extend your miserable life by a few days. I really don’t want to play doctor.”

“How strange a coincidence. The reason I am in these woods is to see if I can extend your miserable life by a few sweeps.”

“Wait, what? You don’t even know who I am,” Karkat retorted. He was beginning to think that the adult wasn’t so much a deserter as suffering from a rusted think pan.

Pulling back her outstretched hand, the adult fumbled with the neck of its shirt, finally retrieving a necklace. On the end hung Karkat’s symbol. 

“I was sent to find the descendant of the Sufferer. I am a member of his disciples. Though our numbers have declined over the sweeps, there are still those who believe,” she explained. Her voice was grave, weighted with the solemnity of her task.

“Mm, yes, of course. The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Sighing, the adult reached out and clasped his hand. Karkat did some futile thrashing, but before he could work himself into a proper state of panic, she had the needle point pressed to his wrist, breaking the skin. He hissed, watching his terrible, horrible, practically fluorescent blood fill the glass chamber. When there was a substantial amount sloshing around in the flask, she withdrew. Karkat pressed down on the puncture mark, not so much trying to apply pressure as trying to conceal the color. Yes, it was pointless, but neuroses died hard.

Ignoring his obvious distress, the adult twisted some dials on the device. There was a low hissing and rattle from it, and the chamber fogged up with steam. When it cleared, Karkat saw that the blood in the chamber was now the deep burgundy of a rust blood.

“The fuck?” was the only coherent thing he could think to say. 

“You will be required to take several blood tests in the coming sweeps, as you begin the school feeding for your desired career. This device will allow you to pass yourself off as the lowest caste.”

She held out the device. Karkat didn’t take it. He was too busy staring at the vial, at the blood that had been scarlet a minute before. It looked so normal now. 

“I…why would you do this for me? How did you even know I existed?”

“Your ancestor. Have you not heard of him?”

“Look, ancestors are about as real as Pupa Pan. I don’t know what you were expecting, but-”

“You have a great destiny,” she interrupted. “Many people have given their lives to keep your ancestor’s message alive. One day, you will lead these people, and start the world anew.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” Karkat said, scooting away from her. “Look, thanks for the blood test thingy, that’s going to come in hella handy. But I am not interested in the good news, thanks.”

He scrambled to his feet, fully intending to get the hell out of there. 

“It was fate that led us to meet. What brought you into the forest in the first place?”

“A suicidal sense of compassion,” Karkat shot back. 

This brought a smile to her lips.

“Then you truly are meant to carry on his work.”

Karkat had heard enough of this craziness. He snatched up his Sunshield (yeah, that baby’s still trademarked) and threw it haphazardly over his body. Tucking the blood device into one of the many pockets, he dashed for the entrance. The adult made no move to stop him. 

He sprinted through the forest. When he reached civilization, he slowed just enough to weave around all the surveillance devices. By the time he got back to his hive, his body was shaking and he was wheezing like he was breathing through a sponge. 

He spent the rest of the day pacing his hive angrily. What he was angry at he wasn’t sure. Possibly at the universe in general. Come nightfall, he had calmed down a little. His mind was hazy from lack of sleep, but that was nothing knew. He decided that the best thing to do would be to try out this new blood device. There was a Threshecutioning class he wanted to register for that required a blood sample. Time to see if this device actually worked, or if it was just going to lead to a horrible culling. 

Not even bothering to change his shirt, he walked down to The Store again. Unfortunately, the entrance was clogged by a crowd of fuck-faces, jostling and talking excitedly. Karkat almost turned around and went home. However, he was just as susceptible to curiosity as every other member of his species. 

Hesitantly, he approached the outermost troll and asked, “The fuck is this?”

“I don’t know, man. People are talking about some sort of criminal the drones caught.”

Karkat felt a supernova happen in his stomach, making everything flash hot and then collapse into a black hole. With righteous fury, he shoved his way through the mob until he was at the front. There he could see the adult, stripped bare and laying lifeless before the store. Its teal blood painted the ground in vivid stripes, finally converging at a whole on its chest. Above it hung a banner that read:

DEATH TO ALL WHO OPPOSE THE EMPIRE.

Bloodshed was like catnip for trolls. Executions didn’t happen often on a juvenile Alternia, so this was the first time many of the trolls had seen one. They were frenetic with excitement, talking about how the troll had still been bleeding out when the drones brought it in, why it had been killed, what the intensity of the laser flare that shot it had been. Throughout the night, the crowd waxed and waned with different trolls, but Karkat stayed behind. He couldn’t bring himself to leave this troll. This troll who had died to get him some stupid hunk of junk that he didn’t want anyways.

Finally, as the sun was peeking above the horizon, Karkat forced himself away. He trudged back to his house, thinking about the broken troll and what it had said. 

I’m sorry. I’m not the Savior you wanted me to be. I’m just one troll.

He went back to his hive and slammed the door so hard his lusus went into a fit of thrashing and screeing. Then he let his entire body sag, sliding down to the floor. He wasn’t crying. Karkat never cried, it was too dangerous. But he had just broken his personal record for self-loathing. 

I didn’t want anyone to die. You shouldn’t have risked your life. I’m no one’s messiah.

I’m just a kid.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this (and be honest with yourself, you know you did), then check my profile. I am thinking of writing more on this same theme, of Karkat being this object of worship for like this underground troll cult. idk, i do wat i want.


End file.
